The Weekend Digress | Vol. 1

The result of being offline and IRL

On December 31, I did something I’ve done 100 times before — I deleted Instagram off my phone. Typically when I do this, the deletion lasts a day or two before I fire it back up and act like I’ve been reborn and cleansed of my gluttonous social media sins.

But not this time.

It’s been a week and the app is still banished from my phone and, while the plan is to keep it that way through the month of January, I wouldn’t be surprised if it stayed this way for the foreseeable future.

(No worries, though, because my friends are keeping be abreast of the important things I’m “missing” as evidenced by the below)

As someone who’s been sickeningly addicted to this instantaneous social app for years upon years and all but taken my life over engagement rate, follower count, views, and validation through likes, being without it this past week has been the best I’ve felt mentally in a long time. I’m not just saying that either.

What I AM saying is that my amount of pickups (as in, the number of times I literally physically PICKUP my phone throughout the day to look at it) is down 72% from what it was a week ago.